A Hero's Daughter

by Andrei Makine

  “You’re breaking my heart! We’ve heard all that before…. The poor little orphan from Kazan,” Svetka cut in. “I guess you’d like an extra milk allowance for dangerous work as well, wouldn’t you? Meanwhile, you’re a bunch of millionaires. You talk about a paycheck…. But that hardly keeps us in toilet paper. And you charge a hundred dollars for ten minutes. You said it yourself, you know, that one — what’s her name, now? The one with big boobs. She sleeps on a mattress stuffed with hundred ruble notes.”

  “A mattress?” gasped Olya.

  “Yes,” Ninka took up the tale. “She was scared to deposit her money in the savings bank. You see, in theory she was working as a cleaner at the children’s nursery and she was worth maybe half a million…. But where to hide it? So she began stuffing notes into the mattress. Her dream was to work like a horse till the age of thirty, then find a guy, start a family, and have a cushy life. But of course it was her boyfriend who really screwed her. As well as her foreigners, she had this Vladik, a Russian, all to herself, for a bit of romance. One night he can’t stop fidgeting, something’s getting to him, poking him in the ribs, crackling under him…. And in the morning he has a brainstorm! He waits for Sonka — Sophie, we call her — to go out and he undoes the stitching. And there, for God’s sake!— beneath a layer of foam, are hundred ruble notes and foreign currency — packed so tight you couldn’t count them! But he was clever, the pig. No question of taking it all. Sonka’s friends would have moved heaven and earth to hunt him down. He started taking it out a little bit at a time. And that’s how he lived. She was earning it; he was burning it.”

  “Men! They’re all vampires!” Svetka sighed.

  “So what happened in the end” Olya wanted to know.

  “It finished the way it was bound to, of course! Using her money, he picked up a girl and flew off to the Crimea with her for the weekend. He passed himself off as a diplomat. And why not? He was flashing wads of those mattress-stuffing dollars. Why shouldn’t it be true? When Sonka found out, at first she wanted to strangle him on that goddamned mattress that very night. But then she went all soft and forgave him everything!”

  The gray winter’s day sank gently into a silent and peaceful evening. And they were still chatting in the kitchen. Outside it began to freeze and voices sounded clearer and more resonant.

  Hungarian Ninka was telling stories about her summer trips to Sochi, her quarrels with the local girls, and how one day some completely drunken Finns had thrown her out into the corridor stark naked.

  “And their lady wives, by the way, developed a taste for coming to stay here. They come to Leningrad for the weekend as tourists and then instead of visiting the cruiser Aurora, they pick up clients by the shovelful. It was a girlfriend of mine who told me — they take all their trade. The militia leaves them alone. And that reminds me, she told me a good story. Four prostitutes meet: a Frenchwoman, an Englishwoman, a German, and a Russian. They start arguing around which of the four is best at picking up men. They’re all lined up on the corner of Gorky Street and Marx Avenue, near the Hotel National.

  At that moment a car started honking noisily outside in the street. Ninka jumped up and ran to the window.

  “Oh my goodness. My little friend’s arrived. Right. I’m off.”

  She finished the story in the hallway as she slipped into her fur coat and put on some lipstick.

  “Hey, are you going to walk around barefoot all winter?” Svetka exclaimed in astonishment, looking at her delicate ankle boots. “Take care or your toes will freeze and then no more dollars to fill your mattress! And then what will you sleep on with your little friend?”

  Adjusting her fox fur hat in the mirror Ninka answered carelessly: “Oh, you big softies! You princesses with your peas! You sit there in your offices next to your radiators. It’s easy for you. You get to be driven all the way to the bedside in an official car. But we’re out there on our feet in all weather, like the sentries at the Mausoleum. Never mind ankle boots! Let me sell you my patent formula. When they kick you out of the Center, you’ll need it!”

  “So what’s this patent formula?” chorused Olya and Svetka in amazement.

  “The patent formula. You buy a pepper poultice from the drugstore, you cut it to the size of the sole of your foot, and, presto, you stick it to your foot. It works like a mustard plaster but it lasts longer and it doesn’t burn so much. It’s thirty degrees below outside but you can go out in elegant shoes. You feel as warm inside as if you’d had a good nip of vodka. That’s how it is, my pampered friends. It’s different from lolling around at the Kontik Hotel sipping cocktails.”

  Under the window the car kept on honking. “All right, I’m coming,” grumbled Ninka. “He can’t stand being kept waiting, that one. Ankle boots from abroad. I’ve put them on specially for him. Maybe he’ll marry me, the fallen woman….”

  They chuckled heartily as they kissed and Ninka raced down the stairs, her heels clattering.

  Outside the evening was turning blue. Olya washed the dishes. Svetka sat slowly drinking what was left of the flat champagne and scrabbled about in the cake box for the little nuts that had fallen off.

  “It’s the last glass,” she excused herself. “Tomorrow I’m starting a new life. Help! That parfumier’s coming from Paris tomorrow and I have to get up at half-past five….”

  In the course of these evenings together Olya longed to talk openly to Svetka, to confide in her. To ask her, “What about you, Svetka? Do you like this life? Aren’t you ever scared? Scared of your youth passing away … And this whole routine … From the first meeting when everything is official, the black shoes, the severe suit, the professional woman, Soviet style … until we get to the bed with Intourist sheets. Just the smell of them makes me want to throw up. Doesn’t it scare you when you get one of these old fellows, you know, just on the brink of retirement, with an anemic body and scrawny armpits that already smell of the grave? The time it takes to get him warmed up, you’re sweating like a masseuse or a nurse in intensive care. For the past ten years he’s only been cheating on his wife with porn magazines, and now he’s hungry for exotic Moscow nights, luscious Russian kisses…. Doesn’t all that make you want to throw up, Svetka? And yet with the young ones, it’s even worse. At least the old guys don’t take themselves too seriously And they pay well. But these sons of bitches think they’re giving us a thrill with their biceps that stink of deodorant. And on top of it they’re so cheap! They’re all penny pinchers. You’ll never believe this. One day I was watching an Italian packing his bags. There was half a can of meat pâté left over from our breakfast. You know what? He wrapped it in plastic and slipped it into his suitcase. I said to him, T’d get rid of that! It’ll go bad in the plane!’ But that cut no ice with him. He laughed. Til have it for dinner tonight in Rome….’ You go on waiting. You go on waiting, like an idiot. It’s the same with you, Svetka, you’re waiting too, only you won’t admit it. And you go on spinning your hula hoop like a robot. …”

  But Olya did not dare to say this to her so baldly. That evening she skated around it, making a joke of it. But Svetka understood at once what she was driving at.

  “Olyechka, that’s the semi-Muscovite coming out in you. Ninka was right: all on a silver platter! Moscow? Well, excuse me! The Institute? Help yourself The International Trade Center? Come right in! You should have lived in the village of Tiomny Bor like me, up near Arkhangelsk, then you wouldn’t be wallowing in this morass of existentialism. An eight-mile walk to school each day and it was so cold that when you spat it froze in the air and made a noise as it landed. When you started taking in the laundry off the line it snapped in half. You take it into the house, you look at it, and presto, the shirt’s lost its sleeves. And the people! Total savages! You can’t imagine. Everyone’s drunk. We had a neighbor. He and his wife were completely drunk every day. And a child every year. They had nine in all. All a bit cracked, of course. Thanks to the vodka, the parents had become complete zombies. A new child arri
ves and they give it the first name that comes into their heads. Afterward they find they’ve got two Sergeis and two Lyudkas…. And you talk about being scared? Now this is scary. Nothing in the stores but canned mackerel in tomato sauce and weevily millet. That’s all there is! And vodka, of course. The whole village goes to bed dead drunk every night and the wolves snatch the dogs from their kennels. You talk about Our youth passing away’ Well, where doesn’t it pass away? An anemic body … Well, get her … ! A smell of the grave … You do talk a lot of rubbish, especially at bedtime. Now, just suppose you were married to a little Muscovite executive on a hundred and fifty rubles a month, do you think that’d be more fun? He’d never stop reminding you about his Moscow residence permit and his paltry square meters of living space. And where would you work? At the factory? Translating patents for a hundred and thirty rubles? At the end of a week you’d have such existential angst, you’d go and work as a cleaner at the Center. You need to simmer down. No one’s keeping you here. The KGB? Oh sure, you bet they need you! They only have to whistle and people will come running from all over the Soviet Union to get their hands on your nice little job. They’ll find more exciting girls than you to do it! You’d better believe it. You’re too spoiled, that’s your trouble. Look at Hungarian Ninka. No father or mother from the age of seven, brought up in an institution. And that’s where one of the teachers assaulted her when she was fourteen, she told me. He took her into the shower and you can guess what happened next. In her place another woman would have become a drunkard and a wreck long ago, but she’s as tough as nails…. She’s treating herself to a cooperative apartment in Yassenievo, buying herself a Volga, the latest model. She’ll get married and everything’ll be fine. She has about three hundred thousand rubles in different savings banks. While you’re moaning away about your pointless existence and the futility of waiting, she sticks mustard plasters on her feet and off she goes, all flags flying! So what about my Volodya, you say? But what difference does it make to him? Foreigners are work, not a love affair. And apart from them there’s no other man in my life, you know that. Volodya has his military service. I can’t go running after him to Afghanistan. And over there, by the way, you get promoted fast. In no time at all he’ll have his colonel’s three stars. Then we’ll get married. And there’ll be no more talk of foreigners. I’ll ask for an office job at the Center. Even now he’s like a pig in shit. When he comes home on leave I stuff him with caviar and he gets to drink wine you won’t find in most ministers’ houses. And furthermore I’m a woman who gives him first-class service. So it’d be a great mistake for him to complain. Right, Olya. We’ve talked enough. Let’s go watch the news on TV. It’s odd — there’s been no sign of Andropov for a long time. They say he’s very sick. Oh look, you’ve washed all the dishes. You are sweet!”

  Then, half stretched out on the divan, glancing ab-sentmindedly at the screen from time to time, she went on in a dreamy voice: “You know, I sometimes get fed up with all this myself, too. The feeling that I’ve had enough. It all wells up inside me. You’re in bed with this wretched capitalist and every time he exhales he breathes right in your ear…. What a pain! You tell yourself: 1 was a schoolgirl in a white smock, I was waiting for Prince Charming in a star-spangled cloak….’ Oh and talking of princes, how’s your prince from the World Youth Organizations Committee? You realize what a fiancé I’ve introduced you to! And here you are, always complaining. … A gift from the gods, a fiancé like that! Parents at COMECON, a four-room apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt! You need to hold on to him tight. Don’t let him fly away. You won’t find yourself another one like that. A future diplomat!”

  The weather forecast came on.

  ‘Oh lordy!” groaned Svetka. “Down to minus twenty-five. Tomorrow I’m going out to buy some mustard plasters.”

  “Everything’s fine,” thought Olya. “I did well to talk to Svetka. She’s right, I think too much. Too much food spoils my appetite….”

  She had gotten to know this prince from the World Youth Organizations Committee, Alexei Babov, during the autumn. Svetka had invited him to their noisy parties. Since then Olya often went to meet him and sometimes he spent the night at her place. Occasionally she visited him at his apartment. In his room there was a violin in its case on top of the wardrobe.

  “Do you play?” she asked him one day.

  “No, it was a youthful whim,” he remarked carelessly.

  He tried to seem older than he was. His parents had rushed him into a career and this rapid ascent did not match his age. He dressed stylishly, mixing and matching imported clothes with one another as if in a mosaic; he sought out everything, down to his cuff links. He had black hair, blue eyes, and extremely soft skin on his cheeks. In their lovemaking Olya was at first surprised by the methodical nature and complexity of the positions he dreamed up. It was erotic acrobatics. One day, when looking through his library, she found a book on the very top shelf, between a volume of international law and Youth Organizations in France. It was in French: Le savoir-faire amoureux. It went through the most improbable couplings with a succession of diagrams, like wrestling techniques. The door banged, Alexei was returning. Olya quickly put the book back and jumped down off the chair….

  Yes, truly, everything was going well. A lively job, a constant stream of faces and names, the upheavals that were a prelude to the new year. It felt good to give pleasure, to see this in the way well-groomed, self-confident men eyed her. Good to be aware of her young, firm body, to picture her own face, her eyes, amid all this human activity in the capital. And to feel herself to be adult, independent, and even a little aggressive.

  Olya was unaware that, seen in profile and against the light, the glow of her face appeared almost transparent and juvenile in its delicacy, evocative of her mother’s face at the same age. But that was something only her father saw. And even when he saw it his perception was filtered through such bitterness about the past that, in spite of himself, he would shake his head, as if to banish the fragile resemblance.

  3

  “‘NO FURTHER RETREAT IS POSSIBLE,℉ he says. ‘Behind us lies Moscow.’ And also behind us, for God’s sake, was that line of machine guns! Ha! Ha! Ha! And now Gorbachev’s going to screw the lot of them. You’ve read what it says about Brezhnev in Izvestial ‘Stagnation,’ it says. ‘The mafia …’ In the old days they talked of ‘developed socialism.’ Now that’s what I’d call an about-face! And on Stalin, too. Did you read it, Vanya? Khrushchev’s Memoirs … Nikita writes that when the war came Stalin was so scared he did it in his pants. He barricaded himself in his dacha and wouldn’t let anyone in. He thought his number was up. They told us such fibs: ‘He organized the struggle…. He drew up the strategy for victory….’ Some goddamn generalis-simo!

  Ivan nodded his head gently, making the connection with some difficulty between the voice and the pale patch of a face hovering amid the pearly clouds of tobacco smoke. Waiters with the build of gorillas and the faces of bouncers threaded their way between the tables. Their fingers fanned out, carrying bunches of beer tankards.

  By now Ivan was understanding almost nothing of what his neighbor was saying to him — the one who had served in the signal corps during the war. All he heard was: “Stalin … Stalin …” And in a confused fashion this brought back an image from the past: the frozen expanse of Red Square, on November 7, 1941, the anniversary of the revolution, the endless tide of soldiers chilled to the bone and finally himself amid these frozen ranks. The Mausoleum came into view, nearer and nearer. And already a whispering among the soldiers, like the murmuring of waves, runs through the ranks: “Stalin … Stalin …” Suddenly he catches sight of him on the platform by the Mausoleum, amid clouds of frozen breath. Stalin! Calm, motionless, unshakable. At the sight of him something almost animal thrills in each one of them. Each one of them believes Stalin is looking deeply into his eyes.

  “Following this parade the soldiers went straight to the front,” the confident voice of the commentator
on the contemporary film footage would explain after the war. “And each of them carried in his heart the unforgettable words of the Supreme Commander of the armies: Our cause is just! Victory will be ours!’”

  And they were marching, still marching, regiment upon regiment; with their eyes staring wide, and refleeted in them the crenellated walls of the Kremlin, the Mausoleum swathed in hoarfrost, looking as if it were made of white suede, and a man of average height, whose mustache was covered in silvery droplets….

  A colossus appeared beside their table, a white napkin over his arm, gave the three drunken veterans a blasé look and sang out: “All right, old-timers, shall I fill ‘em up or do you want to pay?”

  “Go ahead, young man. We’ll have one more for the road,” Ivan’s neighbor bellowed. “You see, we’ve just met here. We’re almost all from the same regiment. We were on the same front in the war. But I was in the signal corps, Vanya was a gunner and Nikolai….” Amid hiccups he started relating his war experiences with sweeping gestures across the table. The waiter picked up the empty glasses and walked away, yawning, to get their beer.

  What Ivan pictured now was not Red Square but a courtyard covered in mud petrified by the cold and the dry snow, surrounded by huts or barracks. They have penned in the soldiers there and kept them out in the icy wind for several hours. They have also brought in uncouth lads from the countryside on big farm carts. Clad in padded jackets, disheveled shapkas, and down-at-the-heel felt boots. No one knows what is going to happen next — if they will be sent straight to the front line or left there and fed, or stuck in the barracks to sleep on bunks. And the blue of the low winter sky slowly hardens. Dusk descends. It snows and still they are standing there, sunk in a drowsy, silent numbness. And suddenly, somewhere near the farm carts, the strident cry of a garrnoshka, a little concertina, blares forth. One of the country boys is playing it, bareheaded, with a mane of golden curls, not yet shorn, and a worn, unbuttoned sheepskin jacket…. He is playing “Yablochko,” little apple, a sailors’ song; he plays with desperate passion, tugging furiously on his garrnoshka. His unseeing gaze is lost in the distance, somewhere above the heads. In the midst of the soldiers who surround him a sailor dances with the same reckless passion, stamping his heels fiercely on the frozen earth. He is of middling height, stocky, with a craggy face. Sailor’s jersey, black marine jacket. He dances violently, baring his teeth in a wild fixed grin, and he, too, stares at the gray horizon in blind ecstasy. The accordionist plays faster and faster, biting his lips and shaking his head in frenzy. The sailor stamps harder and harder upon the ground. Spellbound, the soldiers watch his face distorted with blissful agony. They no longer know where they are, they are no longer thinking about food, or sleep, or the front. The officer, who has come over to put an end to this merriment with one ear-splitting yell, stops and watches in silence. The sailor’s boots are as heavy as if they were made of cast iron. They are laced up with lengths of telephone wire.